


An Amorous Discourse

by GreenJacks



Series: Dead Trees and Rotting Love [1]
Category: King Arthur: Legend of the Sword (2017)
Genre: Denial, Gen, Half-Sibling Incest, Implied/Referenced Incest, M/M, Mercia has issues, Other, Possessive Behavior, Unrequited Love, Violent Thoughts, Wet Dream
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-06-08
Updated: 2017-06-08
Packaged: 2018-11-11 09:05:12
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,958
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11145276
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GreenJacks/pseuds/GreenJacks
Summary: Mercia never was a kind boy.The funny thing was, Vortigern didn’t mind. He probably found it amusing.“I like you.” The prince laughed. “You can be mine, if you want.”





	An Amorous Discourse

 

 

 

 It seemed like a cruel name to give to a second born. But then again, Constantine was an eccentric man, like all madmen.

Or so Mercia thought, before he met the prince.

Outside the monastery, one night before winter. He was a scrawny child with wiry limbs and a remarkable pair of steel blue eyes. Just like his father. Just like his older brother. Never like the queen. The others always loved talking about the queen.

The child's feet were bare, his back draped in wolf fur and silver chains dangling beneath his ankles. It made strange chiming noises, like bells, when he scrambled his way across the gravel.

“Stop following me.” The prince leered at the older boy. Those eyes ran in the family, it seemed.

He sounded just like his father.

“My prince,” Mercia acknowledged, after seconds of silence.

“I was requested to retrieve you.”

“By who?”

“Your brother, the prince.”

Vortigern does not even blink. His expressionless face stays, placid and calm. It reminds Mercia of the river, on rainier days. And it always rains in Londinium.

Mercia can see the other’s toes going red from the cold. The child prince says nothing while he spends the silence into staring at his rugged face. He felt judged, peeled naked in front of those eyes.

“You’re Uther’s new dog?”

The question throws Mercia back, only slightly. His back straightens defensively. He has no answer to a question that jabs at his side. It wasn’t what he asked; it was the way he asked it. The tone and the pitch were ever bit perfect. The prince knows exactly where he hit, his eyes were baring white.

Mercia wasn’t going to grace him with an answer. He scowls instead.

“You shouldn’t keep running away from the tower.”

“See how you like it, stuck up there.” The prince snapped back. “Besides, I didn’t run away. The door was left open.”

The older boy sniffed. It was as if saying _it’s not my fault you were born twisted._ He doesn’t feel bad about it. Mercia never was a kind boy. The funny thing was, Vortigern didn’t mind. He probably found it amusing.

“I like you.” The prince laughed. “You can be mine, if you want.”

Mercia hesitated before lifting the frozen child up from the ground. He feels the icy little boy snuggling up against his shoulders, closing his eyes with a yawn and not much more of a resistance. All pale and cold, like a corpse wrapped in his arms.

“Let’s get you back home.” He whispered, unsure if the prince was asleep.

Or dead.

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

Perhaps Constantine wanted to threaten the next would-be king. Mercia knew all too well of the whispers spoken around the halls and stables. The calumny behind feathered fans and jeweled scarves, all the fur and luxury was only ever there to cover up messier things. Like how they whisper about the king, and his dark haired witch warming his bed at night.

Constantine was not a cruel king. He was a man, a mortal. He was not good or bad, just human enough to allow his subjects to know that they were serving a king, not a god. He had whims, and flaws. He was a mighty warlord, an ambitious man. He was a powerful leader, the best, but had no idea how to be a father. All he knew was a steel hammer and an anvil.

Uther does not fear his father. And Constantine is proud of that. But Uther is the wiser man when it came to mortal affairs, and he feared his brother. Not because his name threatened his throne, but because he couldn’t convince Constantine that Vortigern was different.

Constantine can never shape his second born with the methods he used to shape Uther. That was why the elder Pendragon desperately went against the king when they locked the child up in the ivory tower. He argued that he should know how to control the magic he was born with, not forcibly stomp it out by suffocating him with darkness and enclosure.

It was the first time Uther went up against his king. And everything ended badly.

Just like Mercia judged: Constantine was not a cruel king. All the crime he was responsible of was that he was but a man.

Maybe Mercia could have seen it coming. It all happened vaguely, without clear checkpoints, no indications. Uther established him with the unofficial position of hounding around his little brother, and Mercia supposed it was fine with him. It didn’t bother the young knight. It wasn’t like he could have been anything else anyway. The Earl had no plans to make a nameless heir born out of a dead wife the successor to his castle. He had other sons, with a mother alive and well loved.

So maybe, just maybe, Mercia should have seen it coming. He didn’t draw attention, and he didn’t matter within the court. He was the perfect candidate, and Uther dumped it upon him without a second thought. He can’t complain. It wasn’t like Vortigern was hard to find, if he was being especially mean and cynical.

But Mercia’s ugly sarcasm always falters whenever he steps inside the ivory tower.

It stinks with loneliness inside the pristine walls. The stench could drive a lesser man insane.

Vortigern is always standing in the middle of the room, his hands soaking inside salted water. As if the magi flowing through his veins could be washed away, like sin.

He doesn’t hate it. It made him special, and Vortigern was a vain child. _Vanity was intoxicating._

“Mordred is convincing the king to release you into the circle.”

“Trying to exile me now, is he?”

Vortigern answered without turning around, his fingers still swimming around in the basin of water. Mercia walks around the barred boundaries, making a seat for himself against the ledge.

“He sees potential.”

“Clever man.” Vortigern narrowed his eyes. “Mordred will get himself killed one day.”

“He’s your ticket out of this wretched place. Be fitting to be more enthusiastic.”

“When did enthusiasm get anything done?”

Mercia sniggered at the harsh scoffing. He reaches through the cage, stealing an apple resting on a table near his side.

“And your brother wonders why you don’t have any friends.” The knight muttered back, biting into the apple.

 _Kings don’t have friends._ Mercia heard him whisper.

But he was going to let that last sentence slip through his other ear.

No one trusts a mage, and kings don’t have friends. Vortigern was never going to be king, just like how he was never going to be Earl.

“How long is Mordred staying in Londinium?”

Mercia shrugged. Druids and mages never stayed longer than necessary under Constantine’s reign. The court never welcomed his kind, and the priests saw them as apostates.

“A couple of days.” Mercia answered. The sudden scent of iron in the air unsettling his voice.

He sees the color inside the basin turn. Vortigern wipes his bleeding nose away with the back of his hand, fingers turning red with his own vice. He stares into the rippling water, the distorted reflection glaring back at him with loathing.

 

“He is giving me a headache.” Vortigern hissed.

 

* * *

 

 

While Uther had always been what he was, the golden dragon fit for a throne, his little brother shed his shell and learned to grow into his new frame like a serpent beneath the swamp.

In time the younger prince learned to wear his awkward frame better than when he was a child, as he started controlling his lines better to show off an inevitable air of regal elegance, an authentic beauty of which Uther lacked.

Uther was heavy and calm like the dark bottom of a lake, the cold hot sun rays beaming on the city. He was the dragon lurking inside the ocean, while his brother played with the flowing current of the river, unpredictable like the tides, consistent like the rain that flooded the Londinium sewers.

Eerily, Vortigern’s eyes were the splitting image of Constantine’s.

Mercia found the similarity only a little disturbing. There was something toxic about the way they closed and opened, between long lashes that seldom blinked. Those heavy lids, dark red rims, and the scent he carried when he slithered. His lips, those lips that he saw the prince wipe away so often, smothered with blood rotting down his chin.

In Mercia’s nightmare, Vortigern was always the first to kiss him. Pressing his cold lips on the surface of his own mouth. He can feel the poisonous breath on his stubble, even when he was dreaming. Then, Mercia closes his eyes. He leaned forward, pulling at the weight, fingers curling into a fist through the tufts of lupine fur. His fingers gnaw them off, and the draping garment slips off too easily. They reveal pale skin, soft to touch and quick to burn. If this was reality, Mercia should stop. But this was his nightmare, and he’ll tell god to suck it when he digs his nose into the prince’s neck, grabbing his ankles and parting them wide open. It was all red where it should be, and the arch of Vortigern’s hips are too inviting, it was almost painfully alluring.

And Mercia wakes up in the morning with a punishing headache. His chest is throbbing, and his manhood was stinging. It is one of the worst possible ways to start your day. He attempted to meet it with a groan, falling back into the blankets.

Because there is nothing like a good _fuck you_ than your own dream forcing you to acknowledge that dark twisted place inside your head.

There will be a special place in hell for him, Mercia thinks, when he dies. The man lets out a heavy sigh, bursting out in tune with the rustling sound of his pants lowering. He closes his eyes, imagining the prince and his tongue against the length of his cock.

 

 

* * *

 

 

It was raining the day Vortigern left Londinium. Mercia was standing on the hill, immobile on his horse. He couldn’t see anything from up there, and everyone was so small for him to even notice. But from there he could see the ship leaving the docks, and with it, carried the abandoned prince away from his home.

“You will miss me,” he said, before he left.

Mercia tried too hard to deny it. The knight pulled a face, unable to say “no, I won’t.”

Then he let the prince go, leaving him behind like a good little dog to watch over the house.

Now he feels lost. His master was gone, banished into the circle of mages in fear of Constantine’s deep loathing for the black arts. They would call it study, when only Uther bit back a bitter reply; _‘They are hell bent on creating a monster out of my brother.’_

Back in the empty tower, Mercia wonders how none can see that Vortigern was already a monster.

Nobody created him. He was born with Constantine’s eyes. He found it funny that Uther believed their father was responsible for his brother’s misery, when the only thing Vortigern would sometimes grieve for was his worthless pity.

More than twice Mercia wanted to burst out into an hysterical fit of laughter in front of Uther Pendragon, and his blatant love for his younger brother.

Oh please. He found himself muttering inside his head. You know nothing.

When the rain stops beating at the roof, Mercia will put up with the hideous headache once again, trying to drown out the small little voice inside his head. Telling him that, he was simply bugged, on the reality that was this:

 

_Vortigern would never love him more than Uther._

 

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Guy Ritchie what have you done?
> 
>  
> 
> * The theory still stands that even in the movie verse, nobody really makes it clear why Vortigern can't use the sword even though he is Uther's brother. Sure there's the whole he's not a direct heir thing going on, but still, logic. I don't know why, dramatization probably, but I don't have a clue why Uther and Vortigern were depicted as brothers (I mean, I am pretty sure Vortigern literally assassinated Constantine in the official records) and if this depiction is somehow influenced by the cultural source materials, and henceforth the reason why he can't use the bloody sword, then I think the theory stands that it makes more sense to realize Vortigern is Uther's half-sibling. I'm not even sure this fandom exists, but to hell with it, I'm having fun loving this and I'm rolling with it on my own if I have to, haha.


End file.
